All But Lost: A Novel. Vol. 1 of 3

by G. A. Henty

But stately as was Wyvern Hall, and wide and fair as was its park, the Bradshaws were by no means a wealthy race. Previous to the rebellion they had been so, but the Bradshaw of that time had thrown himself heart and soul into the Royalist cause. He had lost everything but life, and lived abroad with his Prince in France, until, at the death of Cromwell, men once more shook off the iron Puritan yoke from their necks, and welcomed their King home again from his long exile. With him returned Marmaduke Bradshaw. More fortunate than many, he succeeded in regaining his family estate, and in ousting the pious corn-factor of the neighbouring town, who had, by the fervour and lengthiness of his prayers, and the strength of his right arm, fought and prayed himself into possession of the domain of the malcontent and godless follower of the man Stuart. But although Marmaduke succeeded in thus regaining possession of the mansion and park, he was not so fortunate as to the various outlying farms and properties. Some, indeed, he recovered, but the greater part were in the hands of surly iron-fisted men, who had won them on the fields of Marston and Naseby and Worcester, and who were by no means men to unclose their hands upon what they had once grasped. Force was not to be tried. The King was engaged in endeavouring to make himself popular to all parties, and had very difficult cards to play between them, Marmaduke Bradshaw, therefore, settled down in the family mansion with a greatly diminished rent roll, but still thinking himself lucky in comparison to many others, whose devotion in times of adversity to their King was but ill rewarded on his return to power.

The mansion and estate were strictly entailed, and the Bradshaws had hard work, with their horses and their hounds and their lavish hospitality, to keep up their establishment in accordance with their apparent wealth, and to hold their own among the county families, with perhaps far larger means and less expensive domains. Nor indeed could they have done so, had it not been the rule and habit of the family to marry well. They were a good-looking, fine-grown race; and to be mistress of Wyvern Park was no unenviable position; consequently the Bradshaws had nearly their choice among the county heiresses. Thus by constant additions of fresh property the lords of Wyvern Park were able to maintain their position and reputation. Reginald Bradshaw had, in accordance with the family tradition, married a neighbouring heiress, and for some years kept almost open house. But by the time that his eldest son came of age, and Harry was seventeen, money began to run short with him. The property his wife had brought him was mortgaged nearly to its full value. To his grievous dissatisfaction and disgust, therefore, he found that he could no longer retain his mastership of the hounds, and that it was absolutely necessary considerably to retrench his expenditure. Harry was offered a choice among the professions; the church, the army, or navy, or an Indian cadetship. He selected the latter, and started a few months later, with his father’s blessing, a light heart, a hundred pounds in his pocket, and permission to draw for two hundred a year as long as he required it.

The times were troublous and promotion rapid; and when at the age of six-and-twenty he heard first the news of his father’s death, and, four months later, of that of his brother, who was thrown from his horse returning from a hunt dinner, he was already a captain. He returned to England at once; for his brother had died unmarried, and he was now therefore the owner of Wyvern Park. In another year he married a pretty, quiet girl, possessed of considerable property; with this new accession, and under his auspices, the property improved greatly. Although he had been only eight years in India, the climate had during that comparatively short residence sufficed to ruin his constitution, and to send him home a confirmed valetudinarian. He found himself therefore, to his great disgust—for he was passionately fond of field sports—obliged to give up all horse exercise. Fortunately he was not prevented from shooting, and in the season would spend all his time in the fields with his dogs and gun; but he was entirely debarred from the hunting field, and was forbidden to indulge to any extent in the pleasures of the table. But although all this was an intolerable grievance to the master of Wyvern Park, yet Wyvern Park throve upon it greatly. In a few years, instead of mortgaging his property as his ancestors had done, Harry Bradshaw found himself in a position to clear off many old standing liabilities on the outlying properties, and to be able to add others to them. Although unable to join in the hunting field, or in the deep-drinking bouts and jovial meetings of the period, there was hardly a more popular man in the county than Harry Bradshaw. He was by no means of the ordinary big burly Bradshaw build, but was a light active figure, with an open kindly bronzed face, clustering black hair, a merry infectious laugh, an inexhaustible fund of fun and anecdote, an inveterate habit of swearing—then a far more common habit than now—a very quick fiery temper, and an intense objection to anything like dictation on the part of others.

Generally popular in the county as he was, there were yet some by whom Captain Bradshaw was looked upon with an eye of extraordinary disfavour. Foremost among them was the Earl of Longdale, the patron, and, as he considered, the owner of the little borough of Longdale, which had been an hereditary appanage of his family from time immemorial. Very aggrieved and highly indignant therefore was he when Harry Bradshaw—whose estate adjoined the earl’s, and who had had a dispute with his lordship respecting the right of shooting over a small piece of waste land which lay wedged in between the properties—brought down from London an unknown barrister of Conservative opinions, and at every election contested the borough with his lordship’s Whig nominee. His candidate never polled a dozen votes certainly, for as nearly the whole property belonged to the earl, and none of his tenants dared to record their votes against him, it was a hopeless struggle; still, it was none the less provoking to the earl to read, in the county papers, the fulminations against himself with which Harry Bradshaw wound up his speeches on proposing his candidate, or to hear of the cheers with which these orations had been greeted. For if his lordship’s tenants were compelled to vote one way, they considered that they had at least the right to shout as they pleased. And Harry Bradshaw’s speeches were exactly of the sort to carry an audience away with him,—full of biting truths, interspersed with humorous appeals and broad fun, dashed here and there with bitter personal invectives, and spoken with a thorough enjoyment and zest, and an earnest conviction of truth and right.

But the great climax of Harry Bradshaw’s offences was when the earl shut up a public footpath leading across a pretty corner of his park.

The town of Longdale, although indignant at losing its prettiest walk, would yet have sullenly acquiesced in it, had not Harry Bradshaw taken the matter up, and with some of his labourers levelled the barrier which had been erected. He then at his own expense fought the case from court to court, until at last the right of the public to the walk was triumphantly established, and the earl’s pet project defeated.

Captain Bradshaw had two sisters, both very much younger than himself. The eldest, Alice, after she came of age, when on a visit to some friend in London, met and fell in love with Richard Bingham, a young civil engineer.

Very indignant was her brother when informed of what he considered such an extremely derogatory proceeding. “The Bradshaws had always married well, and why she should want to make a fool of herself he did not know.” Alice appeared to give way to the storm, but when a few months later she repeated her visit to London, she one day went out, was quietly married to the man of her choice, and only returned to her friends to bid them good-bye, and inform them that she was now Mrs. Bingham. The first notification which her brother received of it was on reading the notice in the columns of the “Times;” and had the feelings of society permitted a man to fight a duel with his brother-in-law, Harry Bradshaw would most unquestionably have called him out. As it was, he was forced to content himself with solemnly denouncing his sister, and writing a letter to her husband, expressing his sentiments towards him, and these sentiments were of such a nature that no future communication ever passed between them.

Shortly after, his younger sister married, with his consent, if not with his absolute approval. Percy Maynard was a barrister, with a fair practice and a moderate fortune, and although Captain Bradshaw had rather that his sister had fallen in love with one of the neighbouring proprietors, still, as he really liked the man she had chosen, he made no serious objections to the match.

He himself had at that time been for some years a widower, having lost his wife after only four years of happy married life, leaving him one little girl.